


The Epiphyte

by MiriamKenneath



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Gothic Genre Fiction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 18:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13664889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiriamKenneath/pseuds/MiriamKenneath
Summary: A defecating gull delivers a precious seed onto a sabal palmetto’s crown of palm fronds.That is how it begins.





	The Epiphyte

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kisuru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisuru/gifts).



Trees reckon the passing of time with unerring accuracy: Each year, however bountiful or meagre, is unerringly recorded in the ever-growing count of the rings of their ever-expanding trunks.

So, the sabal palmetto knew itself to be old. It was, by its own reckoning, one-hundred and forty-seven years old to be precise.

It was old enough to have witnessed man’s foolish monuments to himself rise and fall and rise and fall again along the particular sun-drenched, hurricane-prone stretch of Atlantic coastline upon which it presided, and indeed it had lived long enough to see man swept away by the swelling tides of his own monumental hubris.

The beaches were mostly empty these days. Even on the hottest, sunniest summer days. No one sunned themselves on colourful blankets; no one cavorted in the gentle surf; and no one built castles in the sand. No one stopped to enjoy the shade of the sabal palmetto’s palm fronds, or to rest and doze with their backs against the base of its rough, strong trunk.

So, the sabal palmetto was lonely, and raucous flocks of gulls did not make for good company. They congregated; they flew overhead; but they never, ever stayed.

Oh, and they also defecated. In copious amounts. And the sabal palmetto could do nothing about it save wait and wish for a rain shower to wash it clean.

But it was a defecating gull which delivered the precious seed to the sabal palmetto’s crown of palm fronds.

Maybe the gulls weren’t _all_ bad.

 

Three weeks passed entirely without rain. The seed, hardly larger than a grain of sand, remained in the crown of the sabal palmetto, nestled atop the base of one of its petioles, close to the trunk, and there, it germinated.

The sabal palmetto was old enough to know that seeds which do not touch the ground do not survive. They cannot put down roots, and without roots anchoring them securely the soil, they will starve…and they will certainly not survive their first hurricane.

Even then, they may not. When the storm comes, even the oldest of trees may be broken by it, may be felled in the onslaught.

So, the sabal palmetto was surprised that the tiny plant which emerged did not die. Not in the first three days. Not in the subsequent three weeks, either. It was an epiphyte, with roots that never touched the ground, and it lived on sun and air and the water which the sabal palmetto made sure to collect for it in its palm fronds.

Yes, the epiphyte survived, but it remained small and weak and vulnerable, and it did not thrive.

In spite of that – or perhaps _because_ of that – the sabal palmetto cherished it. Tended it, like a gardener. Nurtured it, like a parent. Adored it, like…

“You must grow faster,” the sabal palmetto urged the epiphyte. They’d had the same conversation on many occasions previously. “You must be rooted to the ground by the time the next hurricane comes. You should find your own place. I may not always be able to protect you.”

“No! Don’t send me away! I’d rather stay close to you! What would I do without you? I love you!” the epiphyte protested.

The sabal palmetto’s trunk seemed to swell, and its leaf crown seemed to shiver and groan with passion. “And that is why I want you to live,” it said, “because I love you too.”

Now it was the epiphyte’s turn to shiver and swell. It twined its thin, fragile roots around the sabal palmetto’s thick, strong trunk, tentative and sweet at first, then tighter and tighter, an exquisite embrace of the old by the young—

—and in this intimacy, they knew bliss.

 

The epiphyte’s roots grew downwards fast, as it had been bade, and when those roots finally touched the ground, it – at last! – had attained access to all of the nutriment it required to grow and thrive.

And grow and thrive it did, becoming what it had always been meant to be: a tree in its own right with broad, glossy leaves the shape of teardrops adorning wide, spreading branches that made the sabal palmetto’s crown seem puny by comparison. Its aboveground roots, meanwhile, had thickened and hardened to the durability of tree trunks, and the roots beneath the ground plunged far and deep.

The sabal palmetto was glad; its beloved had become stronger than it could have dreamed, and it would be a survivor.

In fact, the epiphyte was beginning to claim more than its fair share of the sunlight and clean water, and the sabal palmetto was having to make do with somewhat less. But it was after all an old tree and accustomed to occasional privation. Besides, it rationalised to itself, the epiphyte was young still and needed those resources more.

So, the sabal palmetto relaxed and enjoyed the embrace of the epiphyte. It had become permanent, yet it never ceased to be intensely pleasurable for both of them.

 

Then, one day, the clouds on the horizon turned ominous and black, the ocean tossed about furiously, and the hurricane came ashore with the full force of the wrath of the Heavens above.

“Don’t worry! Don’t be frightened! I’ll never let you go! Never, never, never!” the epiphyte shouted over the roaring wind and pounding rain.

When it was over, the only tree left standing was the old sabal palmetto. Its many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, had all – to a one – perished. They’d been uprooted, or snapped in two, or shorn of their crown of palm fronds and condemned to death by slow and agonising starvation.

The sabal palmetto had been protected by the epiphyte’s embrace. It wished it could express its gratitude and thank the epiphyte with words, but the epiphyte’s roots had become so constricting that the sabal palmetto discovered that it no longer possessed the capacity to speak.

And because it could no longer speak and reckoned that it had but another year or two or three more to live, it could no longer deny the truth to itself in the privacy of its own mind:

The epiphyte wasn’t a epiphyte…

It was a hemiepiphyte.

_The sabal palmetto’s beloved was a strangler fig._

 

* * *

**_-fin-_ **


End file.
